


In So Many Words

by simmilarly



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Drug Abuse, Gen, Government Experimentation, Hawkins National Laboratory, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mild Language, Project MKUltra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25316485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simmilarly/pseuds/simmilarly
Summary: "Sometimes she says different words. But usually those." An exploration of the different words Terry so rarely uses.
Relationships: Becky Ives & Terry Ives, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Terry Ives, Terry Ives/Andrew Rich
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	In So Many Words

**Author's Note:**

> This was a writing experiment for me, but I'm happy with how it ended up. I clearly took some liberties with Terry's story, but that's fanfiction for ya. Hope you enjoyed it! Feedback is more than welcome :)

This is the story of Teresa Ives.

Fierce, beautiful, wild Teresa. Intelligent, bright, curious Teresa. There were many layers to the woman resigned to the rocking chair, many aspects to her personality from – well, from before. Sometimes, albeit very rarely, those little pieces of personality shone through in the changes she would make to her continuous mantra. 

Breathe. Sunflower. Three to the right, four to the left. Four-fifty. Rainbow.

She wasn’t always the shell of a woman she was now. She was a child once, full of hope and wonder, bright and bubbly and loved. She was loved by none more than Becky, her older sister, her closest friend. The childhood they shared was precious and magical, full of fairy tales and swingsets, something that Becky hoped very hard Terry could still look fondly upon, even while trapped in her own mind. 

Shell. Bubble. Pretty princess. Flower. Swinging.

Trapped in her own mind is not a new place for Terry to be. There had been drugs and lots of ‘em; all sorts, really. They were recreational at first, used in an effort to expand her consciousness. _Hippie shit_ , Becky would say. When she saw a flyer for a study offering payment to take the same drugs she was already bringing into her system for free, she ripped it off the wall and brought it to the laboratory right away. 

Drugs. Conscious. Hippie. Opportunity. Andrew. 

_Andrew_. Andrew had been a fun time with disastrous consequences. Like Terry, he’d been quite the avid drug user, though he didn’t have to scrounge around to find the money to support his drug habits. See, Andrew Rich was exactly like his last name proposed: rich. It showed in his actions, no regard for the law, no control over his drug intake, no remorse for the way he would hurt her in a sudden burst of rage. He was the reason this study was such a godsend for her, an opportunity to make some money so she wouldn’t rely on the likes of him. Of course, knowing what she knew now, Terry considers that study to be anything _but_ a godsend. 

Dark. Cold, wet. Lonely. Float. High. 

Terry’s time in Project MKUltra was also fun, but like all the fun she’d experienced thus far, it brought with it some disastrous consequences. The psychedelics were enjoyable enough, mind-bending enough, heavy enough. Honestly, it was more play than work, at least when they didn’t dump her in the tank. Ugh, the tank. If she could shudder, Terry would nearly jump out of the rocking chair from the violence of the action. The tank was not all bad, in truth, but when under the influence, it was easy to lose track of time spent in the sensory deprivation tanks where the actual experiments took place. How many countless hours were spent in the dark? But the sensory deprivation tanks didn’t come close to touching the worst of it all.

_Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane. Jane._

The day Jane was born was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. She had prepared for months, taking maternity class after maternity class, reading every book that she could get her hands on. The bleeding came as a surprise, an unwelcome visitor on her doorstep when she was expecting to let in nothing but happiness. Terry had been in and out of consciousness the entire ride there, but she was somewhat out of it by the time she was wheeled into the operation room. She had been conscious just long enough to see his face above hers, watching him pull his mask down off of his face. Even in her vegetative state, the thought of him made her blood boil. _Brenner._

Enemy. Kidnapper. Evil.

No one would believe Terry when she insisted that she hadn’t miscarried. Honestly, wouldn’t she know better than anyone whether she gave birth or not? She heard her baby, her little Jane, crying. She wanted her mother for Pete’s sake! Becky was insistent that Terry was simply lost in grief, but that wasn’t the case at all. She knew the truth. 

The next three years were Terry’s own personal hell. Lawyer after lawyer turned her down, each assuming the same as Becky, that Terry lost her mind along with her daughter. She heard the things they said about her as she walked down the hallways of the law firms, begging someone to take her case. _Hippie, druggie, whore. Driven mad with guilt over her miscarriage, wants to blame it on someone else, anyone else._ That simply wasn’t the case. Why wouldn’t anyone understand? She knew the truth! Brenner had her baby and Terry wanted her back, whether it be through a legal avenue or not. 

Thankfully, a lawyer finally took pity on her and took her case. Terry thought this was the start of the good times. Before long, she’d have her Jane in her arms. God, she’d never even held her daughter before she was taken from her, isn’t that devastating? She had to win this case. She had to. 

They didn’t win. The devastation Terry felt at the loss lasted for a surprisingly short time, giving way to new determination. No matter. She wanted her baby back, whether through a legal avenue or not, hadn’t she said that? So the legal option didn’t work, there was nothing she could do about it now. But there were still a myriad of methods to get her daughter back. 

Gun. Guard. Rainbow. Child. Two? Get. Jane. Back.

She had but to reach out to grab the toddler on the floor, to grab her and run. But the moment she reached forward to do so, she was jerked back by the guards that had suddenly materialized behind her. She screamed her throat raw, angry and afraid as she was suddenly face-to-face with Brenner once again. His face had been associated with her loss in her mind, and from that day on, it would forever be so. The shocks were not the worst of the pain she felt that day. No, the worst pain was knowing that she was so close, so tantalizingly close to getting her daughter back, but she failed. The worst was knowing that she knew the truth, that she was right, that her daughter was alive. The worst was that she would never be able to tell anyone that she’d been right all along. 

To the untrained eye, this story does not have a happy ending. How could it? Terry ends up in a rocking chair for the rest of her days, a seemingly meaningless string of words her only communication with the outside world. Her daughter, if she was really alive and not dead as so many assumed, was lost to her forever. How could this be a happy ending? 

Like only a handful of others, Becky knew the truth. She knew that Terry was happy, at peace with the knowledge that her daughter was alive, that she was out there living her life however she wanted. Terry couldn’t want anything more than that. When she finally passed, Becky was consoled by others with the sentiment that Terry wasn’t in pain anymore. This was, in a way, correct, but Becky knew that Terry hadn’t been in real pain for a long time, not since her baby came back to her. The story was complete now, and the protagonist could finally rest, but not without one final string of words, mashed together in a way people finally understood.

Becky. Jane. Happy. Safe. Peaceful. Love you.


End file.
